I've been staying out of the primary race between Hillary and Obama for the most part and have focused on the media's coverage of the primary between
May 24, 2008

I've been staying out of the primary race between Hillary and Obama for the most part and have focused on the media's coverage of the primary between both parties and of course beating John McCain and the Republicans to the White House. While being a very bad analogy on her part and pretty dumb, I don't believe Hillary meant what the media's initial reaction to it was when she spoke in an interview to the editorial board of the Argus Leader newspaper in South Dakota. That being said, readers and bloggers have every right to voice their strong opinions on it one way or the other. It’s a primary and we have a lot of passion about our candidates.

The Politico's John Harris admits:

As leaders of a new publication, Politico's senior editors and I are relentlessly focused on audience traffic. The way to build traffic on the Web is to get links from other websites. The way to get links is to be first with news - sometimes big news, sometimes small - that drives that day's conversation.

We are unapologetic in our premium on high velocity. In this focus on links and traffic we are not different from nearly all news sites these days, not just new publications but established ones like The New York Times.

There are probably a dozen websites with a heavy political emphasis whose links are sought by all for the traffic those links drive.

Then Harris gives his blow by blow account of how the story broke for him: "Media hype: How small stories become big news."

The truth about what Clinton said - and any fair-minded appraisal of what she meant - was entirely beside the point.

Her comment was news by any standard. But it was only big news when wrested from context and set aflame by a news media more concerned with being interesting and provocative than with being relevant or serious. Thus, the story made the front page of The New York Times, was the lead story of The Washington Post and got prominent treatment on the evening news on ABC, CBS and NBC.

What gives?...read on

Interesting.

TPM Cafe suggests that we're all---myself included, too caught up in the primary process and missing some other important issues. What do you think?

UPDATE: Paul Krugman makes some good points and sees the primary race in a similar fashion. "Party unity."

But he has a problem: many grass-roots Clinton supporters feel that she has received unfair, even grotesque treatment. And the lingering bitterness from the primary campaign could cost Mr. Obama the White House.

To the extent that the general election is about the issues, Mr. Obama should have no trouble winning over former Clinton supporters, especially the white working-class voters he lost in the primaries.

The point is that Mr. Obama may need those disgruntled Clinton supporters, lest he manage to lose in what ought to be a banner Democratic year. So what should Mr. Obama and his supporters do?

Most immediately, they should realize that the continuing demonization of Mrs. Clinton serves nobody except Mr. McCain. One more trumped-up scandal won’t persuade the millions of voters who stuck with Mrs. Clinton despite incessant attacks on her character that she really was evil all along. But it might incline a few more of them to stay home in November...read on

(sorry, we hit some tech glitches and some posts will be bunched up, but have a great Memorial Day)

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